Taiwan threats backfire on Beijing

China’s latest bout of sabre-rattling against Taiwan appears to have backfired in terms of Beijing’s relations with Europe. Until Beijing passed the anti-secession law, which threatens Taiwan with military action if it declares independence, it was widely believed that the EU would lift its 16-year-old embargo on weapons sales to China before Luxembourg’s presidency of the Union expires at the end of June.

European Voice

3/23/05, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 11:16 AM CET

But Javier Solana, the Union’s high representative for foreign policy, indicated last Thursday (17 March) that while the eventual scrapping of the measure is not in doubt, its timing is. Solana’s top advisor on non-proliferation issues, Annalisa Giannella, was in Washington last week in a bid to counter US criticism of EU plans to scrap the embargo. Yet as her visit coincided with the adoption of China’s new law, she found herself unable to allay American concerns that increased weapons sales could exacerbate tensions across the Taiwan Straits.

And US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday (21 March) on the last leg of her first Asian tour that lifting the EU arms embargo against Beijing would send the wrong signal and was not wise, adding that the new law targeting Taiwan “drives home” that point.

Denmark and the Czech Republic are the EU countries still with the most serious reservations about lifting the arms embargo. Under US pressure, the UK has this week indicated that it wants the lifting of the ban to be postponed. Despite recurring reports that the human rights situation in China remains grave, the view from many member states is that the ban is an anachronism. Its continued application means that the EU effectively treats a country with which it has developed a so-called strategic partnership as countries with which it has tetchy relations like Zimbabwe, Sudan and Myanmar.

“The main argument the US had was that the EU was ignoring the strategic situation – China-Japan relations and China-Taiwan relations,” says Tomas Valasek, Brussels representative of the Washington-based Centre for Defence Information. “I wouldn’t put what has happened with the anti-secession law in terms of the EU argument being weakened. I would put it in terms of the US argument being strengthened.”

China, for its part, has been trying to scotch rumours that it has its sights set on becoming a global superpower to rival the US. The Beijing authorities have insisted that China is still a developing country and could not afford the massive defence spending such a step would necessitate. But they have also recently announced a 12% increase in the national defence budget, bringing it to €22.5 billion this year.

Much of the additional expenditure has been earmarked for high-tech equipment, largely from Russia.

To try to avoid the threat of US sanctions against the EU in protest at the embargo’s lifting, it has been mooted that the Union might agree to excluding ‘sensitive’ technology from its sales to China. Such goods may include espionage equipment or precision-guided weaponry.

Axel Berkofsky from the European Policy Centre suggests such an accord might prove unworkable. “There’s a suggestion about keeping arms exports as low as possible but who’s going to check on this?” he asks. “The Germans are thinking about selling submarines and the French are thing about selling Mirage [fighter jets]. That’s not exactly low-tech stuff.”

The arms embargo was a direct response to the June 1989 massacre of pro-democracy advocates in Tiananmen Square. Amnesty International’s latest report on China states that those campaigning for the perpetrators of that massacre to be brought to justice still face repression today. A number of political dissidents were arrested or placed under surveillance late last year and in early 2005 for seeking to highlight the impunity surrounding the crackdown and for mourning the death of late premier Zhao Ziyang, who fell foul of the Communist Party for siding with the demonstrators.

“The EU would probably be confronted with criticism that it is prepared to jeopardise its foreign and security policy credibility for the sake of good relations with China,” Berkofsky adds. “The EU talks about its strategic alliance with China and that is important. But let’s not forget the embargo is all about human rights.”

David Fouquet from the Asia-Europe Project is in favour of removing the embargo, though would oppose a free-for-all in weapons sales. “If the embargo is lifted, it should force the Europeans to really consider closely their policies towards Asia,” he says. “It will have to be a responsible player. When they’re authorising a licence for a military transfer, they will have to do an impact assessment on regional effects.”

He argues that the anti-secession law may have been misconstrued, pointing out that it makes clear that military force against Taiwan would only be used as a last resort. On defence spending, he points out that increases have broadly been in line with rises in national income and have largely been spent on salaries for its two million-strong army. “China has a powerful industrial, technological and financial base. It has a middle class that now maybe includes 200 million people. But it still has a billion people in relative poverty. It has a lot of other priorities on its agenda that come before military development and modernisation.”

Dieter Dettke from the Washington office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation has been campaigning for the embargo to go. He argues that it would be best for the EU and US to draw up a joint code of conduct on arms sales to China. Yet Brussels-based diplomats perceive that suggestion as a non-starter. “It’s a great idea but it will never happen,” says one, pointing out that the EU’s 25 countries cannot even agree to make their own.